Stranded in Parallel [Chapter 8]

The only thing worse than being actually sick is pretending to be sick. I heard my mom leave, then eventually come back about an hour later. The whole time, I waited for more words to be left there in the notebook. None came.

After carefully tucking away the notebook under my pillow so that Mom wouldn’t run across it, I made my way downstairs. Mom was on her knees in front of the fridge, sitting in the pale glow, scrubbing at the mostly empty plastic shelves.

I dragged my feet across the shaggy carpet, both to alert her and to feign my listlessness. I also let out a low cough to get the point across further. With my chest usually somewhat congested, it wasn’t too hard to fake. Mom jumped and jerked her head over at me.

“Oh, you gave me a fright,” she sighed, hand to her chest. “I’m just doing some cleaning up. Never know how the last people left it, huh? Still hungry? Oh, I should get my mask.”

She nearly jumped up to her feet after her barrage of words.

“I’m fine,” I huffed, stopping her as she planted her palms to the ground at her sides. “I mean, I’m not really hungry. I’m just going to watch some TV in the back room.”

Mom let her arms go limp, and she nodded. “Of course. Just take it easy. You know the drill.”

Just like the day before, I couldn’t find anything interesting on TV to watch. Nothing that would compare to a strange notebook that would produce writing on its own. I heard Mom clamoring around the kitchen some more, then vacuuming, then turning on the lights in the hall for a pass through the hallway with whatever she was doing next. I laid back on the couch to forecast my next movement.

When Mom’s cleaning frenzy arrived in the back living room, I sat myself up stiffly, then blinked at her lazily as she shuffled in with the vacuum cleaner. “I’m going to go back up and lie down some more,” I declared, pushing myself up off the couch.

“Okay. I’ll try and keep it down for you,” Mom sighed. “You’re sure you don’t need anything else?”

I huffed and brushed past her in the entrance to the hall. “I’m fine.”

As soon as I was behind my room’s closed door, I reached down under the nightstand to get my hands on the notebook. Its spine had taken on a vague fold that allowed it to open nearly to the right spot. My breath caught in my throat as my eyes found their way to the new set of words.

I should have said this earlier, but tell nobody of this. You haven’t, right?

Sitting back against the wall, I dug up the pencil from under my pillow and began to write a response. The words trailed off to the top of the next blank page.

“I haven’t told or shown anyone. I don’t know what I would tell them. To me, it looks as if these words are being written here by an invisible hand with an invisible pen.”

I gnawed on the end of my pencil, thinking whether I should write more or if I should wait for a response. I didn’t have to wait long, as the intricate strokes of writing began to scrawl themselves below my own fresh words.

That is good. You said before you were confused. I was also confused. I thought it was a prank. By my friends. But I can see your writing just as you scribe it in your… notebook. I saw it before my own eyes. I don’t know what you may know of this… situation, but I have a theory. A hypothesis, actually. Something I have heard of in my studies. Would you care to hear my thoughts?

I realized at some point I was squeezing the pencil tightly in my hand, almost to the point of breaking off the tip of the lead. When the writing finally ceased, I released my grasp and shifted the tip back to the paper.

“How… do I know I can trust you? I mean… I hardly talk to strangers in person, and you’re more strange than anything. You also mentioned a hex, and I don’t want to get messed up with one of those.”

I nodded and sighed, looking over the words again and again, double-checking that it made sense, that my handwriting was legible. Surely if I erased something and rewrote it, he…she…it would see that. That would be embarrassing. So I simply waited.

Of course. You volunteered a lot of information about yourself earlier this day. It is only fair that I do so too. My name is Ohanzee. To me, Natalie sounds like a female name. Is that correct? My name and my body are male. I have seen 16 winters… years, you might say. And due to our unique circumstances, we may exist very close together and also very distant. And don’t worry, a hex is out of the question.

I tried to picture this sixteen-year-old boy, Ohanzee. It sounded like a native person’s name, but I had never met anyone called that before, sixteen or otherwise. I sighed and bit my lip, analyzing his last sentence lingering there on the page.

“How do you know we’re that close together? Remember, you’re still technically a stranger, even if I know your name. That could all be made up. Your age, too.”

Shall we discard pleasantries for now and return to my theory, then? I could prove to you that you’re in no peril from me.

I clicked my tongue and wrote back beneath his words. “You mean a hypothesis? Fine, go ahead.”

Yes. Hypothesis. Good. It seems that your world is adequately developed in terms of knowledge-seeking. And by your world, I mean that it is a different world from the one in which I currently reside. A parallel world.

I mouthed the word parallel as my eyes traveled over our exchanges, now reaching halfway down the lined notebook page.

Parallel being a crude name for it. I hope you are familiar with the concept.

Parallel was a word I had learned at school long before. “Of course,” I began to write, but my pencil markings were soon overtaken by the otherworldly scrawling. Our overlapping words were soon crossed out by thick, splotchy lines.

Sorry. I got caught up in explaining.

“Go ahead. I won’t stop you. At least, for now.”

On the far half of the opposite page, two long lines traveling up and down began to take shape. At each of their ends, little arrowheads also appeared. My eyes danced back to the original exchange, where Ohanzee was continuing to write.

See those? Those are parallel lines. They continue off for… an infinite distance… in theory. They will never cross, intersect, get further, or closer to each other. But that’s only on a flat plane, like this paper. If I simply tore out this paper and rolled it around so they touched… they would no longer be infinite. If I crumpled it, folded it… I could make them intersect very easily. The universe, time, everything out there… nothing in nature is so simple and flat. And so, eventually, parallel things… may come together.

I held the pencil in my fingers up at attention, making sure Ohanzee had no more to write before I responded. “So, our worlds, for example? You said we are close, but also distant. How much?”

That I don’t know.

I sighed and let my legs down, crossing them and placing the notebook down in front of my bent knees. “Why? How?”

A line appeared beneath his previous words.

“Can something bad happen because of this?”

A doodle appeared from the edge of my response and wound back again to the same words.

I rolled my eyes and tried to process what I was reading. “How does a parallel world even come to be?”

That I do know. Well, there’s a theory. Not mine. But think like this… you’re on a path that splits, and you can either turn left or right. You choose one way, and that seems like the end of it. But at that moment, another world is created where you had chosen the opposite direction. That is the creation of a parallel world. In theory.

I bit my lip, imagining the splitting paths in my mind and reading over Ohanzee’s writing. “You like that word.”

Theory? It means something that has been tested and studied and thought to be true… a fact. It is the truth of the world.

“I know what it means. I’ve also studied science. Here in my world. Many people study it. But there’s nothing about my world’s science that can explain these parallel worlds. Or writing just appearing on a page from a different world. We would call that magic. Like the hex you threatened me with on the last page.”

I smiled, placing the eraser end of the pencil I my mouth. My teeth pressed into the flexible metal part holding the eraser. I gazed at the movements of the fresh strokes on the paper.

“Knock that off. That probably has tons of germs from who knows where.” A voice broke the silence of my room.

I jumped and threw the pencil down, then pushed the notebook to the side, flipping it closed in the process. “What the heck are you doing in my room?” I hissed at my mom, who had suddenly popped into the doorway.

“I knocked,” sighed Mom, one arm on the door jamb and one on her hip, a frown on her face. “I didn’t want to wake you up if you were sleeping. But it seems like you’re up.”

I glanced at the notebook to make sure it was properly shut and mostly out of sight. “What does that matter?”

Mom sighed and shrugged. “You know you best. I can’t decide for you whether you need to lie down and rest or not. I don’t care if you come up here to write in a diary or whatever. I’m just worried that you’re avoiding me for some reason.”

I tried my best to lower my voice. “I’m not.”

“I know that a lot of things have had to change recently. I wish, for both of us, that things could have been different. A lot of things. Let’s just both try our best to make the best of it.”

“No problem for me,” I sighed, attempting the bare minimum of eye contact before staring back at my bed comforter.

“We can… plan another outing for another day over dinner. Speaking of which, I wanted to ask if you feel up for a full dinner, or if you’d rather have something easy on the stomach.”

“I can eat whatever.”

“That’s fine with me, then. I’ll get started on it in a bit. Want anything to snack on before—“

“I’m fine,” I hissed, tugging at the pillow behind my lower back. “I mean, I can get something on my own.”

“Okay. I’ll close the door, then. Rest up.”

The door squeaked and clicked as Mom departed. I listened for her footsteps to fade down the stairs before I grabbed the notebook again. I flipped back through the pages to where we had left off, one eye traveling back to the gap under the door.

Magic is another crude word. Interesting, but crude. The word magic suggests that something can exist free from reason or explanation. The lack of understanding does not imply that magic is at work. I hope that I can convince you.

Shaking my head, I fumbled for the pencil before writing again. “I see. Sorry, I was interrupted. Trying to make sure nobody else finds this ‘magic.’ I think I am convinced, but I’d also like to learn more. It won’t bug you if I ask more questions?”

Of course not. But my leisure time is at an end. They will worry about me if I do not return. Until tomorrow.

I solemnly tapped away at the next open space of paper below. “I’ll be waiting.”

Stranded in Parallel [Chapter 7]

“Natalie. Nat,” Mom said from the doorway of my bedroom, followed by a light knocking.

I jerked up from my bed and looked around. The morning light was coming in through the window. Mom was leaning in the doorway, half propped open. I glanced at the notebook on the nightstand, still in the same place as I left it before I went to sleep.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to surprise you,” Mom apologized with a shake of her head. “The offer still stands if you want to go out on the town today. I don’t want to rush you or anything, but it will be cooler if we head out before it hits noon. If you still want to go, that is.”

I bit my lip, glancing at the notebook, then at the window. I desperately wanted to look at the lined pages to see if anything had changed. I wanted to respond. Mom’s eyes hadn’t left my face, waiting for an answer. I offered the magical words that got me out of most situations.

“Sorry, I don’t feel good today,” I murmured, blinking slowly back at her.

Mom’s eyes sank to the ground and she shuffled in. “Darn. Darn it for sure. We had a good streak there, with the treatments helping, you know. What’s got you? Chills, or is it in your chest this time?” She asked, head shaking.

I made eye contact with her as she felt my forehead with the back of her hand. I let her do her thing as she usually did. “Well, you don’t feel warm, I guess. I think we packed the thermometer in somewhere, but I’d have to dig it out.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed, shaking her head some more. “Look at me,” she sighed wistfully. “There I was, coming in straight after work, hugging on you without even thinking to wash my hands. And after telling you to wear a mask out any everything. I should be taking my own steps to make sure I don’t bring those types of germs home. I should mask up at work. Darn. Let me look around to see what meds we have.”

“Mom,” I huffed. I almost wanted to tell her that I actually wasn’t sick, but surely it only would have seemed like I was appeasing her.

She pushed herself up off the bed. “Get some more sleep, dear. I’m sorry. I’ll look around in the rest of the boxes for your meds. Which should have been unpacked by now, seriously. I’ll let you know if and when I pop out to go to the drugstore.”

I slumped back against the wall as Mom shut the bedroom door behind her. I couldn’t help but look at my lap. At some point I would have gotten actually sick, and we would have gone through the same song and dance. My eyes trailed off to the nightstand and the notebook. My wish to get time alone with it had been granted.

My heart tightened as my eyes ran across the fresh words on the pages.

You have no right to ask any such questions. No right to feign confusion. This is not your book of notes. If you don’t quit this vandalism, I will bring this matter to the headmaster.

I read them, then reread them. I ran my fingers over the ink, but it didn’t feel different than the rest of the paper. I grabbed up the pencil from the nightstand and immediately pressed it to the paper below the previous message.

“My name is Natalie Howakahn. I am 14 years old. I am currently living in Grand Forks, North Dakota. This is a notebook found on the shelf in a closet in an apartment that I just moved into. It has a black and white cover, and was covered in dust when I found it up there in the closet. On the pages before this one, there are many drawings and—“

A knock on my door jerked me out of my exposition to the notebook paper. I tossed the journal and pencil to my side. Another knock came, followed by the door unlatching.

“I’ve got some food, Nat,” Mom whispered in. “And I found some cough drops if you want them. Also a newish bottle of aspirins.”

She was wearing her greenish paper mask, carrying a plate of toast and a glass of water. I could hear a bottle of pills rattling in her pocket.

“I’m fine,” I hissed at her, pulling the blanket up over my lap and secretly sliding the notebook further away from me.

Mom set the cup on the nightstand, followed by the plate by my side on the bed. She noisily set down the white bottle of pills by the water. “If you’re feeling good enough to make it down the stairs, you’re free to make anything you’d like. But this should be enough for now, right? Take one of these vitamins, too. I know it says they’re past their expiration date, but the pharmacist at work says that they aren’t bad, just less… effective.”

I turned my head away from her and nodded, just hoping to get her to leave. From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of fresh letters being traced across the page of the notebook.

My spit caught in my throat causing me to cough suddenly. Mom adjusted her mask before patting me on the back. “Just as I thought.”

I huffed loudly, clearing my throat and hoping that she wouldn’t notice the notebook. “I’m fine. Just worry about yourself.”

Mom sighed and stood up. “It’s my job as a mom to look out for you. That being said, I’m going to pop out to the store in a bit. We need more cleaning supplies. Who knows what germs got left here from the previous tenants?”

I stared down at the plate of toast and dragged my finger across the edge of the dish. “That’s fine. I’ll be fine here.”

“I’ll be back before noon.”

As soon as the door was shut, I took up the notebook in my hands to study the fresh words.

You’re real…………………………………………….. If you’re still here in three hours, I wish to trade more words with you.

Stranded in Parallel [Chapter 6]

Quit messing with my notes. I don’t know what sort of tricks you’re using, but I’ll put a hex on it if you continue. Anyone who touches it besides me will be stricken with misfortune.

My eyes scanned the lines of text over and over. It resembled the drawings on the other pages, like the ink was a part of the page. The writing was neat and intricate, written with something other than an ordinary pen or pencil.

I read the words over and over, lingering on the words hex and misfortune. I picked up and chewed on the end of my pencil, thinking of something equally unique to write back.

“You could think of something better than misfortune. I’ve already got loads of that. If you can conjure any hex, you could have something blow up in my face. Dye my hair bright orange. Make me grow a big, nasty beard. Make it so my pants won’t ever stay up. That way, you would instantly know the perpetrator.”

I giggled to myself properly this time. I laid on my back and held the notebook in the air above me, hoping for more writing to appear. I waited and waited, with my arms eventually getting tired. I placed it back on the bed, open to the same pages. I stood and paced, holding myself back from constantly looking. I made my bed in the meantime, allowing myself only a glance or two. I went down and retrieved a few more of my books. Another peek, but nothing had changed.

I organized. I eyed the unchanging pages. I closed and opened the notebook just in case, then placed it back exactly where it had been. I made lunch down in the kitchen, ate half of it, and came back to the same amount of blank space residing on the page. Back downstairs, I plugged in the TV and screwed in the cable from the wall while nibbling at the remainder of my lunch. I scanned the channels mindlessly while the strange anticipation shifted around my stomach.

I was about to jump back up and check one last time when the lock on the door clicked open. I held my breath as Mom slid into the entryway, untying and sliding off her clunky black work shoes. My eyes met hers and she smiled.

“Welcome back,” I stammered, looking back at the TV sitting by the table there on the ground.

“I’m home,” she smiled. “Anything happen while I was away?”

“Uh… the cable guy came.”

“I see that,” Mom chuckled. “I’d say not to sit so close to the set, but I guess I’ll let it go this time.”

I glanced back at the heavy CRT there on the floor and nodded. “Yeah. No way I was going to move this on my own.”

Mom huffed, setting down her purse and marching my way before settling down on the ground beside me. “I thought packing up all our stuff was bad, but getting everything back together is probably worse, huh?”

I nodded while she rubbed my shoulder. “Yeah.”

“Let’s work on this whole… mess… tomorrow. Together.”

“Sure.”

Just as I turned my eyes back to the set, the commercials came to an end. The channel I had settled on randomly returned to a Spanish-language soap opera, the characters mid-argument. Mom chuckled and ruffled my hair. “I’m guessing the channels are all different here, huh?”

I mashed the off button on the remote and tossed it aside. “Yeah.”

---

I almost forgot about the strange notebook while I helped my mom shuffle around half-empty moving boxes, then helped with dinner. Almost. The first chance I had after eating, I hurriedly shuffled back up to my room. The notebook was still lying open there on my bed. The bed squeaked as I jumped stomach-first onto it, followed by the sharp creaking of the floor below. I remembered that I was on the second floor, and worried that my mom might have heard me jumping around upstairs.

Those thoughts were cut short by the sight of more writing. There it was in the same angular letters, seemingly embedded in the fibers of the paper.

You have quite the imagination. And quite the tricks to get to my notes again without me noticing. What do you want?

I dove around to find the pencil from before, but my mind took a little while longer to settle on a response.

“I don’t want anything. I’m just really confused. I think these notes of yours are also my notes. My notebook. Well, not mine. I found it. Do you have a name?”

I felt my hands shaking as I put down the notebook and pencil. I’m not sure why I wrote that last part. It must have been that instinct, instilled in me by my parents, teachers, and other older people, not to talk to strangers. And if the writing in the textbook, or the… thing making it had a name, it wouldn’t be a stranger.

“Nat!” Came a call from downstairs.

I nearly jumped out of my skin upon hearing my name. “Yeah?” I shouted back down.

“Weren’t you going to help me set up the TV in the living room?”

I flung myself up off the bed. “Coming.”

I checked the notebook before going to bed that night, but it hadn’t changed. I placed it on my nightstand, facing it as I drifted off to sleep, thinking about the owner of those words on the lined pages.

Stranded In Parallel [Chapter 5]

I ended up hiding away in my room the rest of that night before eventually falling asleep early. When I got up the next morning, I could hear my mom fiddling around downstairs with boxes and whatever else. I didn’t want to face her yet, but the bathroom and my hunger called. I eventually crept down the stairs sheepishly. The creaking floorboards announced my arrival.

“Good morning,” she said with a weak smile, on her knees in the front room with moving boxes still about. “You’re up early.”

I glanced at the digital clock on the oven, the only timepiece in the new place. “Hungry,” I murmured.

Mom nodded. “I got some bread yesterday, too. It’s in the cabinet on the right.”

“And peanut butter?” I asked hopefully.

“You remember… they said that might aggravate… your condition,” she said, trailing off. “But… there are more tests we can do to see what might be good or bad for you. But I did buy jelly.”

“Fine.”

Mom shifted herself back to her feet. “I’ve got to head into work again today. Don’t worry about unpacking anything else… unless you want to. Your books are in this one. And the cable installer should be here today for TV. Don’t worry, you won’t have to answer the door for them or anything. They’ll just hook up to the box outside.”

“Thanks,” I said, my back turned and bread already in the toaster. “I mean, yeah, got it.”

I sensed Mom standing behind me in the little threshold there between the dining room and kitchen. “And hey… don’t worry about what we talked about last night. One thing at a time. We don’t have to make our decision right this moment.”

I faced away and nodded in general agreement, trying to avoid committing myself to a response. Mom came up behind me and brushed my hair back behind my ears before leaning over my shoulder and kissing me on the cheek.

“I’m going to get dressed for work and head out, little one. Just take it easy. I’ll be off tomorrow, so we can maybe go out and see the town properly. Go shopping. Visit the park. Whatever. No use being cooped up here all summer.”

I nodded less than before, just enough to make it seem like I was listening. Mom trotted upstairs shortly after, only to descend again in her khakis and polo shirt as I was sitting down with my toast.

“See you later,” she said, blowing a kiss from the entryway before sliding out the door.

After eating, I washed the plate and began to meander around the boxes in the living room. All of them had been opened to reveal the mismatch of contents inside. A decent amount of the contents had been either placed somewhere in the house or piled up in preparation for finding a proper home. My books from my old room were piled up in that manner, waiting to go up to the empty bookshelf in my new room.

Reading had been my escape ever since I started to get really sick. Books take you places you can’t normally go. Places that don’t even exist. They let you experience things that don’t exist in this world, like magic. They let you meet characters that can overcome anything that gets thrown at them. And those characters you admire always win in the end. I guess that’s why I like them so much.

Liked, I should say. I hadn’t picked up a book since the diagnosis. One book in the pile was marked with a makeshift bookmark, a torn piece of notebook paper. It was the last book I had been reading back when my sickness was just a normal sickness and not something so indeterminable. I couldn’t even remember what the book was about.

I fished the nearly forgotten paperback out from the pile and marched with it up the stairs, glancing back and forth between my footing and the cover. By the time I was in my room, I had flipped to the place I had left off, the pages where the paper bookmark had been sandwiched. I ended up on my stomach with the book on my pillow, eyes tracing the words for any familiar names or other proper nouns.

I realized quickly that trying to pick up from where I left off was a lost cause. Flipping the book over, I rolled and fumbled around to try to find the bookmark, which had gotten lost somewhere in the unmade covers of my bed. Instead of the scrap, I found the strange notebook shoved down in the folds of my comforter. I flipped through the used pages to find a blank one to rip out, but quickly noticed something amiss.

The little note I had written— something like a diary entry— was gone. “Did I dream writing that?” I asked myself out loud. Facing the window, I examined that first blank page in the morning light. While my written words were gone, the imprint from my pencil pressing into the paper remained. I ran my finger across the narrow imprints to make sure I wasn’t going crazy and imagining things.

I jumped up and found the same pencil from the night before in its spot on the floor. I set myself down with the notebook, pencil held tight and words rushing through my head. On the line below the old indents, I began writing something new.

“I am still alive. But if these words disappear again, does that mean I am not?”

I almost chuckled at the absurdity of the idea, paper eating up my words. Maybe my mom had found the notebook and simply erased the words out of worry, or just ripped out the page. I thought about what else to write, but a sudden knock downstairs made my whole body tense.

I dropped everything and crept to the hall, then peeked down the stairs. I saw a shadow behind the blinds in the front window, which crept away after a moment. I sighed. The cable guy.

I worked up the courage to head all the way down and check the window. The tall van adorned with the cable company logo was pulling away. I undid the lock and opened the door to find the paper hanging from the outside handle.

“Sorry, we missed you. Reason for our visit:” it read in printed letters, followed by a handwritten message in the open space. “New customer- first time cable hookup.”

I sighed, tucking the paper under my arm before retreating inside. I put it on the dining room table for my mom to see when she got back. With a sigh of relief, I skipped back up the stairs.

I almost dove back down on my bed to stretch out and possibly sleep some more, but the still-open notebook caught my eye. I knelt on the floor and peered at the mostly blank page. My words remained, but a fresh line of text had been scrawled.

Stranded In Parallel [Chapter 4]

After managing to sate my hunger on some more cereal, I faced down the empty, dreary apartment once again. There was no TV hooked up yet, and sorting the books in search of one I wanted to read was a task for either several people or several days. And despite the possibility of making my mom feel guilty about me doing work instead of resting, I decided to unpack the stuff for the kitchen.

Mom came home that afternoon to all the drawers semi-neatly put away. She sighed and rolled her eyes as I expected, but I assured her that the unreachable upper cabinets were left for her. She forced a smile and set out the food she had brought from the store. “Well, I guess we can just dig in right away, then. Get some real food in us.”

The table we brought with us wasn’t the one from our dining room back at home, but it seemed to fit the space better. It had a few smaller boxes and packing material on it, but I had made sure to leave enough space for us to use. Mom and I still ate on paper plates for that early dinner, one of those pre-baked chickens and a bag of salad. “I hope you didn’t try to undertake all this unpacking on yourself. If I go up to your room and—“

“I didn’t. I was just bored,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “I wonder who lived here before,” I asked randomly, thinking back to the notebook still sitting up on my bed.

“Huh?” Mom said, looking up at me with a bit of worry. “Did you find something left behind?”

I shook my head even though I knew otherwise.

“Drugs or something?” Mom hissed and wiped her mouth, leaning across the corner of the table. “People hide things in weird places.”

“No, Mom,” I said with a huff. “Just… an old notebook. Way back in the closet, on the top shelf. Maybe someone really smart lived here before; it had some math or sciency stuff in it.”

Mom shrugged and leaned back, breathing out the weariness from her day at work. “Well, the landlord didn’t tell me about the people who lived here before. Hopefully, whoever it was won’t miss it. But that reminds me. We can’t go too long without getting you signed up for school.”

I bit my lip and shoved my hands into my lap. “Come on.”

She reached across the corner of the table and grabbed my arm. “Please don’t fight me. You need to go to school. I know a lot of things are different right now, but starting school this fall will get you back into a good habit. Especially now with you getting your treatments.”

“And I’ll be the strange new kid, hiding behind a creepy medical mask and missing class half of the time.”

Mom’s face twisted up before she sighed and sat back. “Everyone is the new kid starting their first year of high school.”

“Not back at home, between the two middle schools and the one high school.”

“We’re not there anymore,” Mom said with a shake of her head. “You used to love school.”

“I like school. I don’t want to deal with the people there. Other kids my age are heartless bastards. Especially to someone different.”

“That doesn’t go for everyone.”

I slapped my thigh. “All it takes is one or two to turn your life hell. But why even think about school at this point, either? I’m going to be sick my whole life. You heard them, there’s no cure. I’m going to either end up kicking the bucket before I graduate, or at best living my life cooped up in bed, plugged in to tubes and machines.”

“Natalie!” Mom hissed, hitting the table. “You know that’s not true. You are getting treatment so you can live a full, happy life just like any other person.”

“What kind of normal person has to live within five miles of a hospital for the rest of their life? Has to shield themselves from other people’s air? Has to take medicine every single day just so they can eat and breathe and get out of bed? How can I ever get a real job? How can I ever see the world? How can I ever find someone who would love me, someone who is perpetually getting sick? Dad certainly couldn’t handle that sort of life.”

“Don’t bring your father into this!” Mom shouted, standing up.

I stood right after her, stomping off into the hall and up the stairs. With a slam of my door, I dove onto my bed and buried my face into the ruffled sheets. I felt my throat narrowing as I huffed and suppressed the tears. Outside my door, I could hear my mom’s feet making their way up the stairs, only to stop just outside. I heard the carpet shuffling for a moment or two before the stairs began to creak again, more slowly.

When I finally caught my breath, I could feel something flat and solid resting uncomfortably beneath me. I tugged it out from underneath my chest and slid it across the bed. I blinked at the black and white splotches in the late afternoon light and remembered what that distinct pattern belonged to.

After getting up and flicking on the light, I returned to my bed, knees tucked to my chest, with the journal in front of me. I flipped through the pages again, simply hoping to distract myself. The drawings were still indecipherable, the text unreadable. Just the writing itself was strange, like it was a part of the paper and not written in pen or pencil. The lettering tapered from thick to thin and sometimes trailed off into splotchy lines.

Kids in my middle school classes would use their notebooks to pass messages or just to scribble on. My notebooks at the end of the year only contained disjointed notes and questions to ask the teacher, as well as religiously scribed due dates in case I was out sick.

I turned to the first of the unwritten pages before deciding on something to write. I rolled across the bed to the corner where my old backpack was hunched over. Inside the front pouch was a hardly-used pencil which I flipped daintily in my fingers. I found myself leaning over the notebook there on my bed with the lead to the paper.

“June… something. I am currently alive. But for how long?”